When you're nine years old, Christmas is the main event, the holiday that every kid anticipates. Magic permeates the atmosphere; it's the culmination of a year of school and chores, homework and play, and Christmas vacation is a wide vista of possibility. My friends and I willed Christmas to be closer, but it always seemed absurdly distant. When Christmas lights illuminated our village streets and decorations appeared on the houses, they served only to sharpen our appetites. The magic of Santa and the season teased us. That magic saturated our existence and filled us with Christmas spirit, much of it fueled, to be honest, by rapacious avarice. We loved to get stuff for Christmas.

The three television channels convinced us that we needed particular toys, but store-bought toys were rare in our small farming community during the '60s. On birthdays, a single gift was typical, and we agonized over what to ask for, continuously changing our minds as we browsed the Sears catalog and watched Saturday-morning commercials, but we were usually disappointed to get a new pair of pants or some socks instead of the butterfly yo-yo or pocket knife that haunted our dreams.

Christmas was different from birthdays. Santa's elves made the toys without regard for trademarks, so anything was possible. Christmas brought kid-wealth, often several gifts that we actually wanted, equating to inconceivable riches and splendor. The song said that visions of sugarplums danced through children's heads, but for us, it was Lite-Brites and Viewmasters, Slinkys and Play-Doh, wood-burning kits and Rock 'Em Sock 'Em Robots.

Christmas brought kid-wealth, often several gifts that we actually wanted

One Christmas in the mid-1960s, my two best friends and I decided to coordinate our gifts to integrate and maximize the fun. We had wanted toboggans for as long as we understood their existence, and we each wrote to Santa begging for a toboggan and outlining the vehicle's essential nature. We were convinced that our lives would be complete and that unending contentment would result if we all had toboggans. It wouldn't do for only one of us to have one; to truly enjoy playing outside together, we each needed our own.

Each of our families had a runner sled that we shared with siblings, and while runner sleds are awesome, they don't work well in deep snow, which was predominant in upstate New York. Toboggans, though, would let us fly over that snow. We would be the wind and air; we would be jet pilots and race drivers. A toboggan would confer superpowers.

"We can set up a slope behind Jawbone's barn," said Mothman Brubaker. "It's long and there's that dip at the bottom that will make a killer jump." Mothman had earned his nickname because of his obsession with collecting moths. Jawbone collected jawbones that he found in the woods, which were plentifully stocked with the bones of raccoons, squirrels, and deer. I had a nickname too, but I'm disinclined to reveal it because it was ridiculous.

"If this works out, I'm naming my toboggan Scoopwing," said Mothman, and we were not surprised since it was the name of one of his favorite moths. "What about you, Jawbone?"

"I have the perfect name: Maxilla." We were sure that had something to do with jawbones but didn't care what, and it sounded cool. "What about you, Oort?"

Dang it, Jawbone, you always had a big mouth; I didn't want my nickname revealed in this story. I was captivated by astronomy back then and perhaps over-explained the Oort Cloud, after which Jawbone said simply, "Okay, Oort, whatever." It wasn't a great nickname but like every other, it originated spontaneously. Mine sounded like pig grunts when my friends called at me from a distance, and they took advantage of that characteristic. "No doubt about it," I said. "If Santa comes through, my toboggan will be Comet."

"Oh, that's good," said Jawbone. "Like Santa's reindeer."

"What? No! For comets, not for a deer. Y'know, speeding, orbiting balls of ice?" I pointed to the sky.

"Right! Haha, yeah, I forgot who I was talking to. Too bad, though. If we all named our sleds after Santa's reindeer, he might be more likely to deliver."

"If we all named our sleds after Santa's reindeer, he might be more likely to deliver"

"No way I'm changing mine from Maxilla," said Jawbone. "If you want Santa to be impressed by a name, you should name yours Mrs. Claus." He broke into howling laughter. "Mothman and his mighty toboggan: Mrs. Claus!" He kept laughing until Mothman knocked his hat off and stepped on it. They wrestled on the frozen ground, and I went home.

The weeks leading up to Christmas were tense. Not only were we anxious about potential toboggans, but the weather was dismal: windy and cold with gray skies, but no snow. How would we ride our new sleds with no snow? Every Christmas we remembered was snowy. Admittedly, that memory covered only four or five years, but that was half a lifetime.

My worries were interrupted by my mom, who offered to take my brother and me into town to buy our dad a Christmas gift. We'd made gifts for everyone else: pine cone ornaments with glitter, and paper plates with macaroni glued to them and painted with glitter, but our dad required deeper consideration. He wasn't a glitter kind of guy. We'd decided to pool the money we'd earned from extra chores to buy him a new pipe, and now we were on our way.

My dad wasn't a glitter kind of guy

We'd been saving for weeks and between us had $2, enough to buy him the best pipe he would ever own. Mom dropped us at the tobacco shop and told us she'd be back in a half-hour. We felt very grown up as we sauntered in and started looking around, smelling the pungent tobaccos and cedarwood. A clerk asked if he could help us. "We want the most expensive pipe you have," said my brother. "Money is no object." Dumbass. He didn't know how to negotiate.

"Of course sir, right this way." He led us to a glass cabinet filled with pipes. "This is our top of the line, a briar imported from France. It's $15." My brother gulped. He was a couple of years younger and was out of his depth, so I took over. "We have $2," I said.

"That's no problem. What kind of pipes does your father smoke?"

"They're wood, some bent and some straight."

"Well, this is imported from Italy and a very fine pipe, and it's $1.99."

"Wow," said my brother, "I can buy 199 Fireballs with $1.99."

"Does your father like corncob pipes? They smoke very well. Everybody loves them." He showed us one and it was nothing like those in our dad's pipe cabinet. This could be a brand new experience for him. "You could purchase this package of three pipes and still have Fireball money left over."

"Does your dad like corncob pipes? They smoke very well"

Three pipes! This man was our hero. Better yet, we would be heroes. Our dad had never received three pipes at once. When Mom picked us up, she confirmed that this was a perfect gift. His gratitude would be boundless.

Home again, after wrapping the pipes and placing them under the tree, I continued gazing out the window at the weather. I asked my mom about the forecast. She knew that I was hoping for snow because I expected a toboggan in the near future. "I wouldn't get my hopes up," she said. "A toboggan is an awfully big present for Santa to haul from the North Pole. Wouldn't you prefer a new softball mitt? Think of the smell of that fresh leather!"

I scoffed. "It's winter. We don't play softball in the winter. And what if Jawbone and Mothman get toboggans and I don't? They'll be having fun while I stand by and toss a softball in the air? That would be torture!"

A week before Christmas, Jawbone, Mothman, and I were frantic. Still no snow. "We can't slide at 100 miles per hour on dirt," said Jawbone. "A toboggan is no better on dirt than a cinder block."

"A toboggan is no better on dirt than a cinderblock."

"My mom thinks that toboggans are too big for Santa," I said.

"Your mom is wrong," said Mothman. "She makes the best cinnamon rolls on Earth, but how much experience does she have flying a sleigh from the North Pole? I say we leave it to the expert."

The next day it started snowing hard and the plows began rumbling past at all hours. This was a great sign. The snow piled higher. Why would it snow like this if not for tobogganing? It seemed like Santa at work, preparing the climate for our new toboggans

The longest night of the year, Christmas Eve, came at last, and I lay in bed anticipating 6:00 a.m., which was the earliest my parents would let us kids downstairs. I listened for Santa all night and didn't hear him, but I knew him to be a stealthy old elf — he'd fooled me many times. The minutes passed laboriously, one lazy second at a time. I already had my snow clothes ready for sledding. I looked out the window at the snow falling, unable to sleep, until a knock came at my door and I found myself rousing quickly awake. "You coming down for Christmas?" asked my mom.

This was it. This was the moment. The next few minutes would bring ecstatic triumph or withering defeat.

As I walked into the bright and colorful light from the tree, Christmas music and the smell of eggnog filled the living room. I was dazed as my siblings started tearing into their presents, but I quickly saw what I was looking for leaning against the wall beside the tree: the most glorious sight I've ever beheld, a toboggan of gleaming, polished wood. I recognized it at once; it was exactly like the one in the Sears catalog that I'd worn out with reading and rereading: five feet long, select hardwood with countersunk screws, water-resistant finish, permanent steam-bent curve, and full-length heavy-duty rope handrails. It was the Corvette of sleds.

My parents observed my excitement with large smiles. I carefully placed Comet on the floor and kneeled on her. Beautiful beyond belief. I imagined myself on the slopes of Everest, careening past wolves and abominable snowmen, flying down perilous descents at stupendous speeds, and rocketing past eagles in flight. I had to get outside immediately, and I started maneuvering the toboggan toward the front door.

I imagined myself on the slopes of Everest, careening past wolves and abominable snowmen

"Hold on there," said my dad. "Wait until all the presents are unwrapped and we get cleaned up."

I was stricken nearly mute but formulated an unassailable counterargument: "But ... there's snow."

"It'll wait. Open another present."

We made carnage of the living room. My dad was surprised by the corncobs but lit one immediately and was genuinely impressed. "These will be perfect for working outside," he said, but he continued to smoke one through the morning, and was so taken by them that he even kept a spare in a pocket. "These are pretty good," he mused. About the time we had organized our loot, the phone rang.

It was Jawbone. "Meet us on the slope behind the barn."

"Did you guys get...?"

"Oh yeah. Get over here."

Our toboggans were identical, which wasn't surprising. Santa's elves had a busy production line and couldn't customize everything they made, which could be why their toys all looked like the ones in the commercials. We spent an exhilarating hour of the best time of our lives zooming down the hill behind Jawbone's barn. The run had compressed, was nearly ice, and the speed was incredible. We were taking a break when the sound of an engine combined with that of rattling chains grew close. A tractor pulled up and it was our distant neighbor, Russell Bujak.

"Hey guys," he said. "Check out my new wheels." Russell's father owned the John Deere dealership in our township. None of us particularly liked him. He was about four years older than us and was something of a bully and blowhard, but he was keen to show off his new tractor and seemed to have succumbed to the Christmas spirit. He was uncharacteristically friendly, perhaps animated by this incredible new tractor. "Got it today. Whatcha think?"

We were awed. This dirtbag had gotten his own tractor for Christmas. How did Santa get that thing in his sleigh? It was a low-slung, row-crop 2510 with the John Deere 3.3L four-cycle diesel engine, eight-speed with power steering, and it purred. We knew tractors because we often rode our bikes to the dealership to look at them and memorize their features. Russell had put chains on the rear wheels so he could take it around and show it off, which made us hate him more, so we pretended we weren't impressed.

"You guys sledding, huh? Y'know, Dead Horse Road was plowed just a couple days ago. I could tow you up a mile or so for a nice long run."

Our opinion quickly changed. A mile of non-stop sledding? Dead Horse Road was the steepest road in the county and wound its way up to one of the highest points, and it was in our neighborhood. We didn't know how it got its name but in the past, some poor horse probably died trying to pull a wagon up its incline; its bones were probably still up there guarding the road (though Jawbone hadn't found them yet), and its ghost frightening the few motorists willing to hazard the drive.

Dead Horse Road was the steepest road in the county

Dead Horse Road would be the perfect toboggan run, and with the tractor towing us, we wouldn't have to climb that impossible hill. We knew our parents would never approve of sledding on a road, but almost no traffic attempted that hill in the winter; whenever someone tried, their car would be in a ditch for days. And we figured our parents' rules were overprotection, which was the bane of our existence: no jumping off the 20-foot embankment at the abandoned mill on Cascade Creek, no riding our bikes on the conveyor belts at the sand-and-gravel pit, no rafting in the swamp to find water moccasins and snapping turtles. Stupid rules. Parents meant well, but their rules were sometimes counterproductive to kidhood and we considered them mere guidelines.

So we did it. Russell towed us up, and the mile-long ride behind that sparkly new tractor was enormous fun. When we reached the top, we were brimming with excitement. This would be the best toboggan ride ever conceived. The Olympics had nothing on us.

We untied from the tow rope, looked at each other, and pushed off. The winding road was challenging. Toboggans steer by leaning and pulling up on one side of the curved front, and it was an inexact science, especially as we continued to accelerate.

We had to swerve left and right to maintain a speed that we could control, slaloming up the banks left by the snowplow on each side like on a bobsled track; otherwise, we wouldn't have been able to stay on the road. The speed was exhilarating and sometimes even a little scary. Never had we experienced such a long and fast ride. We were all grinning and laughing, passing each other, and completely absorbed in the experience, until the end of the road came into sight.

We realized with horror that we were inexperienced and had not yet mastered the art of stopping. Dead Horse Road emptied onto the main road where semi-trucks and pickups sped past — not often, but enough to be dangerous. Going up over an embankment would be suicide at this speed, but that's the escape that Jawbone chose. Up he went, pinwheeling into the sky and descending into the branches of a big maple tree. I saw him as I sped past and he seemed okay, though his leg had somehow gotten stuck in the rope handrail of his toboggan, and the curved front of his sled had managed to catch over a tree branch like a candy cane with Jawbone dangling beneath it.

Up he went, pinwheeling into the sky

Mothman was ahead of me. I dug my heels into the snow with everything I had and crashed into a snowbank, but while Mothman had slowed using the same heel technique, he was heading directly into the road. I leaped up and ran after him, calling for him to roll off the toboggan, but he was reluctant to separate from his new sled. At least he was slowing down. But then I saw a car coming at him.

It was the big blue Oldsmobile Delta 88 that Old Man Dankworth drove. Dankworth was our arch-nemesis. He was always yelling at us and threatening to call the police when we would pour and light a little Coleman lantern fuel on the road or leave a dead animal in his mailbox. He could get really angry, and Mothman was in danger, not only from the car but from Dankworth's temper. The car was moving as slowly as the toboggan because of the heavy snow on the road, but it became clear that the two would meet.

It was slow motion. Dankworth braked hard, swerved, and slid, and Mothman drifted under the front of the car and wedged there headfirst, sliding along with it. Russell had followed us down on his tractor and was just arriving; he saw it all and took off down the road, the coward.

Jawbone had disentangled himself and he ran to the car with me. Dankworth emerged, the broken stem of his pipe still in his mouth. He spat it out. "What the hell do you kids think you're doing. Oh my god!" We gathered around Mothman, who was still wedged under the car, only his legs visible. "Mothman!" I hollered. "Are you okay?"

His voice emerged from under the engine compartment. "I'm fine! Just stuck!" We pulled at his legs but couldn't get him out. "I'm afraid I might hurt him if I try backing up," said Dankworth. He glared at Jawbone and me. "You kids are in big trouble! I'm getting the police!"

That's when Russell and his tractor sped up to us, followed by my dad in his car. Russell must have gone to fetch him, and word had traveled fast because Mothman's and Jawbone's parents showed up as well. My dad checked on Mothman and pulled the tire jack from his trunk, lifting the front of the Oldsmobile a couple of inches, enough for us to pull on Mothman's legs and free him. The dumbass grinned. "That was righteous!" His parents were all over him, checking to make sure nothing was broken.

Dankworth was fuming and ranting, threatening to call the cops and put us all in jail. My dad pulled him aside. "Listen, Dankworth," he said, "it's Christmas Day; the kids made a mistake: a bad mistake for which they will be punished." He looked at us with the stern implacability found only in the expressions of fathers. The other parents voiced emphasized agreement. Jawbone and Mothman and I shrunk a little. This could be bad.

"Look, there's no damage except we all got the hell scared out of us," said my dad. "There's no harm done. We can resolve this. What's the issue?"

Dankworth looked around furiously, trying to articulate the contemptible nature of the event but only able to splutter impotently. Finally, his eyes found his discarded pipe stem on the ground and he picked it up. "No damage? Take a look at this! These boys are responsible for breaking my pipe!"

"These boys are responsible for breaking my pipe!"

"Your pipe?" said my dad.

"It broke on the steering wheel. I was looking forward to my usual Christmas with a good pipe, and this is the only one I own. The stores are closed. What am I supposed to do now?"

"Is that a corncob?"

"You're damn right. Best smoking pipe ever made."

My dad smiled, patted at his pockets to find what he was looking for, and withdrew one of his new pipes. "Here you go, my friend. It's brand new, never smoked."

Dankworth took it. "You're giving this to me?"

"Just happened to have it. Call it a Christmas miracle, compliments of my wayward son."

"Well, okay, that's not bad. Thank you." Dankworth glowered at us, his seething anger irradiating and melting the snow around his feet. "You kids stay out of the road. And stop putting dead squirrels in my mailbox!" He climbed back into his Oldsmobile and left.

Our parents immediately conferred with each other, and we lost our toboggans for a month. A month! Our brand new toboggans would be kept in our rooms where they would remind us of our transgression.

At last, Mothman, Jawbone, and I were left on our own; it's hard to punish kids too much on Christmas, so we weren't grounded, not yet, anyway. Russell shook his head and took his new tractor home. Our parents left (with our toboggans in the trunks of their cars) to continue Christmas dinner preparations. The three of us looked at each other and broke into laughter.

"How about that last curve?" said Jawbone. "We were going so fast I almost lost it."

"That was the coolest thing ever," said Mothman. "I can't wait to do it again."

"It'll be a month at least," I said. "What do we do now?"

We pondered, and Mothman perked up suddenly. "There's still hockey. I think the ice is almost thick enough. It might break along the edges but let's give it a try. Meet me at the pond!"

Of course! Hockey! It would turn out that the ice wasn't as thick as we thought and two of us would almost drown, but that's another story.